The concept of universal grammar not only leads to an innovative understanding of linguistics, ideas, philosophy, and history, but also to an understanding of human nature, value of existence, and the distinction between humans and other living things.
When all names of currently living people will have perished into oblivion, when all living politicians, presidents, actors, entertainers, authors, athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians, poets,... of today (2016) will have been forgotten, centuries hence, one name will still be known and mentioned in textbooks (of linguistics, cognition, and computer science) and that name is "Noam Chomsky". And, by the way, videos such as this one are invaluable treasures for the future historians of science.
@@1spiders1 You can say whatever you want about his militant atheism movement but you can't deny his contribute towards evolutionary biology. He is the man who discovered meme which is one of the most important discovery in his field. No, I am not talking about internet meme but it is indeed derived from Dawkins' meme.
He was actually 44 here, but yeah., there aren't many videos of a younger Chomsky. Of known earlier material, there is the Buckley debate, Foucault debate, and Chomsky defending Daniel Ellsberg's actions at some program. Plus 2-3 other videos.
I think really people who get disappointed when a speaker isn't trying to persuade them with emotion and charisma have been taught not to consider content but appearance and then will when confronted with this bizarre complaint fall back on suggesting that _this is just how people are_ and you need to be persuasive to be effective, ie. if you're not trying to manipulate people then you're a loser in the market of ideas. Seems like a very predatory attitude.
Exodus 4: 10-11 And Moses said unto the LORD, O my Lord, I [am] not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I [am] slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. {4:11} And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?
the structure of language started with the human kind when they are baby in the belly of three mother they are very smart and the listening to our words strated with voice to words to sentences to order language subject verbes complete order structure with order sentence of course to praghraphes to texts to document to book of course.
The structure of sentences changes with the level of language's fro example we have level of the literary here we the complex sentences: she the most and the great intelligent woman she like the peral of the sea. the level of school the level :the simple sentence with simple words in dictionnaire we found this level in school fro example : she say goodbye. the level of family: say :good :no structure of sentences.
Brinx Yeah, this was taken from a half-hour interview filmed sometime in the mid-1970s for a show called "Day at Night"-you can find the full show here on RU-vid. As far as the photographs go, it's possible that you saw some from the late 70s or 80s, where he still looked a lot like he does here. Nowadays he's noticeably older, but still looks quite good for his age and quite healthy.
To expand on Gerry's response. Language is not only about communication. That is just a minimal part of it. I do not remember exactly, but it represents only between 3% to 5% of the total usage. When you are thinking, you are using language. That is how we codify thought. So, pretty much if you are awake or dreaming...you are using language.
Yes, when you include thinking (which doesn't require agreed-upon rules), things get really creative. unfortunately, most people think negatively, and conversations in our heads tend to be about problems.
How astonished the interviewer seems to be at idea that there may actually be something more to a person's mind, language included, than conditioning! It's as if it's just an established fact that a human being is nothing more than a trained ape. Our culture has certainly drunk deep at the well of "science," or at least a certain popular impression of it as being the same as omniscience. That having been said, I think it might have proven difficult for Prof Chomsky to identify what exactly humanity has in terms of unconscious thought. On the one hand, he may be right, there ought to be some linquistic faculty that is distinctive in its effects and held in commond by all human being because all of us have the same brain generally. But on the other hand, what seems to me to make the human brain distinctive is its capacity to be creative and thus to defy to defy formulation. Ultimately then his hypothesis, though I believe it to be true, seems to me likely to be unprovable.
Is it not possible that the incredibly linguistic creativity that children have is just a byproduct of their extremely plastic brains and prolonged exposure to language. Young children who have a lot of exposure to the piano are perfectly capable of creating a unique tune, this doesn't necessarily mean there's a preprogrammed musical part of the brain does it? How is language different aside from the fact that it's basic components are words instead of musical notes. Once we build up our knowledge of the components of a certain field of study, e.g. for language words, and have those components allocated to a certain part of our brain, creative use of those components involves the brain continuously working different connections between these components. Children's brains are very plastic so a child can make these connections far quicker than an adult provided they both have the same experience of the subject matter. In language's case adults are more articulate than children, but only because they have far more experience. A child can learn a new language far quicker than an adult can.
It is an interesting question. Music is rearranged sounds in a mathematical structure. We do not do the counting of the sequences consciously but it seems to me such structuring is what gets our attention; so it has some form of "syntax". As far as meaning goes (semantics), maybe is a special kind of language in which each person confers its own meaning to the words (notes). Maybe music is related to language. In defense of the Universal Language proposed by Chomsky, how do you account for the fact that as early in life as late stages of fetuses respond reflexibly to language distinguishing it from noise? And how do you account for blind children who can not pick on physical language (gestures, clues) to distinguish it from noises, for the very first time in their life, to begin learning? That suggest our mind is not a blank cloth...there must be a grammatical structure already in us. It is a fascinating subject.
You are actually pretty close to Chomsky's argument! What Chomsky is primarily arguing against here is the idea that language is something that needs to be *taught* and *explained*. The best analogy to the then-conventional wisdom is to mathematics. You may eventually gain an intuitive understanding of quantities, but even counting past three needs to be taught (three because there exist languages in hunter-gatherer societies where there are three numbers--one, two, and more than that). Higher functions in mathematics need to be patiently explained, practiced, and corrected. Up till Chomsky, western social science (and grammar school practice) assumed the same of language--people would not only speak "incorrectly," but *wouldn't even understand language* unless it were explained, practiced, and corrected. Your piano analogy is also very apt: Cognitive linguists discovered that musicians experience music as language. Your average human hears primarily language in the right ear (left brain), and other sounds, including music, in the left ear (right brain). Experienced musicians however hear both music and language from the right ear, and the same parts of the brain are activated when hearing either. So it is analogous to language for some people. But I think it is also worthwhile to note that even banging on a piano is itself already a highly structured musical experience--there are 88 keys, and therefore 88 notes, that can be played. In that way, it's also like a language, in which the rules vary (not all musical traditions have the notes that western music does), but each one is a coherent system that allows for both innovation and games. (I'm also unaware of any culture that doesn't have music--it's pretty much a human universal, like language, unlike for example, math, or architecture) EDITED to add: I think the primary difference between language and other behaviors like music, is that by the time a child reaches five to seven years of age, they have perfectly mastered their mother tongue (sometimes multiple, depending on which languages the people they interact with the most speak). Many children are exposed to music from a very young age, but only true prodigies demonstrate true mastery.
@@jbartnik1918 Well put; apart from the last section, where I can't see the difference between language and music. I think you might have overlooked that many kids are exposed to language and language CREATION, while on the other hand many kids might be exposed to music, but definetly not to CREATING music. Couldn't you say you have (we have) different standards on what MASTERY is, in case of language and music?
@@jbartnik1918 five year olds have certainly not perfectly mastered their language. They would not understand much of the vocabalary in a high school textbook, let alone something complicated. Children don't write books, articles, poetry or anything really beyond very basic things. Far from masters of a language.
Me and my best friend Austin Martin are watching this and we see best friends FYI BUT. We do not ck concur with the hypothesis of a culturally determined walk. The very idea is sickening to man.
Chomsky talks about how it is an observable part of human creativity across cultures to develop language in different directions, with slang, special codes, etc.
Don't want to offend anybody, but even accordingly to his own theory, he says almost nothing about language in this interview. This is a characteristic of any public intellectual that don't want to compromise or tarnish his knowledge in front of great masses...
John Chapman that's not necessarily true. Behavioral training can help many autistic children learn to speak. I think that the innate ability is there, but the motivation and understanding of what to do with it is not.
John Chapman autistic children can learn to develop language through speech language therapy. the way their brain processes language is different from children without autism, so I guess this will affect the lang. acq. device. through social stories, learning about different kinds of emotions and facial expressions that match those emotions, language learning can be done.
When you think about how precious everything Chomsky says is up til now, it is even more frustrating that we shall never hear the ending of his thoughts like: "What you’re taught in school is some relatively superficial set of generalizations..."
It feels really weird as a linguistics student to hear Chomsky having to talk about and defend his ideas as though they weren't fundamentally accepted in and largely elemental to our understanding of language today.
@@luckyswine Generative grammar is only something he added to, not pioneered, and it's a small part of his contribution to the field of linguistics. Regardless of the current veracity of his various linguistic ideas, he's not hailed as the "father of modern linguistics" because of any or all of those ideas, but rather because of his entire approach to the study of language, which was revolutionary at the time and is still influential in how the modern discipline is practised. Chomsky and his ideas aren't infallible, but the linguistics field wouldn't be what it is today without his vital input.
This is excellent. I wonder though, is there a video of Chomsky (but not too technical, but like this one) where Jean Piaget is mentioned and expounded upon some. He was the genius who pointed out that when parents point to a thing -- say a cat 🐱-- and say "cat" to their baby to instruct him, that the child 👶 already understands that the finger (or hand, arm etc.) is NOT the "cat". Therefore, say-ith Piaget, there are "innate structures" in the mind. This is an ingenious refutation of David Hume's belief that the mind is a "blank slate" or tabula rasa. It also brings up Plato's "forms."
When I started learning Japanese many years ago, it seemed so different from anything I knew (Dutch, English). Gradually as time went on I began to realize it really isn't. There's still nouns, verbs, subjects, direct and indirect objects, and so on. The differences that do exist just seem more and more trivial the more you learn. In Japanese, you conjugate adjectives (not all, though; I'm simplifying a bit) and in English you don't, but you can still say "the food was delicious" in both. I'm a total fake when it comes to knowing anything about linguistics or its neurophysiology, but the concept of languages being essentially the same makes perfect sense to me. In nature, diversity can flourish when there's no evolutionary pressure forcing something into a specific form. In language, I think this is why there are differences: the internal language system probably doesn't care if things are wired this way (conjugating adjectives to put them in past tense) or that way (using "was" to convey past tense); there's no difference in computational efficiency.
The real difficult thing when learning another language isn't usually grammar, conjugation and such, it is usually when you are confronted with a concept that does not exist in your native language. For example, in Japanese there is the concept of topics vs subjects は・が we don't have that in English so this is often very difficult to get right for native English speakers. In English we have the concept of plurality. There is a cat vs there are cats. In Japanese they don't make a distinction so countable words give them some trouble.
Huh? は is a subject statement, が indicates the thing being influenced by the verb (intransitive), を also indicates the object influenced by the verb (transitive). The difference between these is clear. For example 彼の娘は竹田さんの息子が指輪を渡した The daughter is the one who received the ring, Takeda's son is the one who gave it, the ring was the thing given, and giving was the thing done. You can omit the giver and still know a ring Takeda's daughter was given a ring. You can further omit the receiver and say a ring was given. Even further, for Japanese, you can omit everything and just say "gave" and you could parse everything from context.
Also, OP, you are talking about Context Free Grammars. If you get a chance, Dr. Chomsky has a lecture on that. I think it's Yale OpenCourseware or The Great Courses. I don't remember which.
@@alphablitz1024 Meh, I know what you tried to do there and I understand. However, I see Chomsky as a dialectic. Take the facts he provides with the utmost precedence and reverence, but take his opinions and ideologies at face value lol. He is human after all.
Our Most difficult college course was Cognitive psychology, using a textbook written by Chomsky in the 1980S. Why was this class so difficult that all the students failed the first test?
Chomsky hasn't written any textbooks as such. Maybe the book was "Knowledge of Language", which was written for a more general audience than his technical writing of the 80s, like "Lectures in Government and Binding" and "Barriers", for example.
Yeah, it's clear he wasn't convinced. Chomsky didn't care either. Most people are too egotistical not to care, but Chomsky is satisfied in the knowledge that he's right -- he doesn't care if the YOU know he's right or not
the answer to this question : that the human kind started with when this human is baby is just hearing the voice behind this baby and training to know the environment behind this human to growing and listening to his parents the meaning hearing voice repeated the voice hearing word's repeated the word's and in the same time make the space of thinking in brain to this human make the correct sentences with subjects verbs complete to paragraphs to books to language spoken and non spoken and all this is just related with different systems of this languages because they are difference in structures of this languages. The Queen MAROUA🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹⚘️⚘️⚘️ and the PROFESSOR frome HAVARD UNIVERSITY LINIGUiSTIQE AND LITERALLY .
Science rarely ages well, but that’s the nice thing about it. We now know language is not just one side of the brain and that humans aren’t the only animals that use lateralization.
the language started with the voice, and we started to know this voice and came words and words came sentences with the right structure subject verbes complete and to spoken language with specific environment with specific linguistic this how the strated if strated with hearing this language all the human kind leroning like this way frome hearing.
It is so fundamental what he is saying and I hope many linguists and language studiers take this point away from the interview: language learning is innate from childhood and not much more is added to that learning from attending school, but putting meaningless descriptions and titles to what your brain has already figured out. When learning another language people so often focus on studying as they did in school with what they learned and were taught about language, finding the nouns, verbs, predicates. But when we first learn a language we do not necessarily sort out the words and ideas in this way in our brain. It is counterintuitive to learn a second language in this way. Don’t do it! Immersion, repetition and I think music, are the best ways of learning a new language. You don’t even need to see a picture of the word to eventually learn what the word means… your brain has an amazing way of making these neural connections over time, just let it work.
What no one has been able to explain so far is how reality becomes knowledge and language. When and how children learn to speak is not related to the written and audio genesis of language. I do not see why Mr. N. Chomsky is considered a great linguist since he did not tell us the way sensory information passes into the field of cognition and language. The issue that all languages have a similar structure, i.e. they have subject, verb, object, etc., what Mr. Chomsky called universals was first noticed by Spinoza, when he said that '' ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum '' i.e. '' The order and connection of the thought is identical to with the order and connection of the things.'' For language, what no one explained, is from where the letters of the alphabet came about as shapes and sounds and how they are collectively connected to what they mean. Can Mr. Chomsky or anyone else explain these? Whoever finds the explanation will be the greatest of all linguists.
Bryan Magee did a much, much better job of interviewing Professor Chomsky (video available on RU-vid), mainly because Magee was practically a philosopher himself and took the time to educate himself on the subject before speaking with Chomsky. Chomsky didn't get that large a Wikipedia entry by just winging it, and it will someday be said, upon occasion of his death, that "It was like a continent had slid into the sea" (with credit to Brad Darrach, who wrote that line about Sir Laurence Olivier's passing).
Bryan Magee also made wonderful introductions to the subject matters covered in his program or the thinker he was about to interview. I love those videos!
Just I case anybody else was wondering: the notion that only humans exhibit brain asymmetry has been refuted. It was common wisdom then, but now we know that animals show handedness for example. That’s what it seems like after 5 minutes of googling anyway.
Remember this from my studies in psychology - all children are born with language in their head , and there’s a difference between syntax and semantics . A sentence can be syntactically correct but semantically meaningless - as in the famous ‘ colourless green ideas ‘ etc quotation.
the brain can leroning a lot of languages, with konw with the miracle of Allah the listening it the ear the système of this wonderful sense we like musulm we leroning this formbooks Qauran the book of all sceince it meanche that: ::::::إن خلقنا الإنسان من نطفة أمشاج نبتليه فجعلناه سميع بصير: :::::::::::::.the vers meaning that Allah created us forme won cell give us outher celles this miracle of Allah and meaning Allah give us the sense of ear and sense of seen here in this vers Allah make the the sense of hearing before seeing and structure of languages starte forme brain and ear it so close .and I want to told that professor I just listening and your speech inspire me like linguistique and want just listening to legend in linguistique and philosophie it honour to sceince with all the respect Professor peace be upon us .
I wonder if studying data on RU-vid (which must be the most significant repository of human language to ever exist) has revealed anything new about language?
I'd say the most significant repository of data is probably texts on iMessage or maybe emails, although those aren't all publicly available. In the past two decades, there has been a lot of research on internet language, including its unique features and the ways it can show the development of languages over time, but I don't know how much there's been related to RU-vid or to video content/comments.
How is immersing a child in situation where language is spoken different from training? If a child were never spoken to it would never learn language - it's no different than someone who has never seen a computer before learning to use a computer by being "immersed" in a situation where computers are being used around them. It seems training is being substituted for learning which people can do on their own. The easiest way to learn is monkey-see-monkey-do. By using something repetitively people develop a deeper understanding of the thing itself.
Worst interviewer. Didn't even enunciate properly so I had no idea what the hell he was saying half the time he was interrupting with random ass questions.
man the interviewer really doesnt get it lmao chomsky's explaining some incredibly basic shit here lmao. granted, he's being really longwinded about it, but what he's saying just boils down to "anyone can learn any language from birth, so the capacity to learn capital-l Language must be innate"
“Anyone can learn any language from birth” is not his reasoning. If it was, that would be non sequitr. It does not necessarily follow that any human being able to adopt any language that language learning is innate in humans. The behaviorist would just say that any human can learn any language because we train them based on the environment that the human lives in (ie with other language speaking humans). Chomsky focuses more on the special niche things that humans are able to do despite never being trained in them (such as identifying a face despite it being turned).
Trying to create context for his viewers, I'd say. Most of us viewing this interview are familiar with Chomsky's ideas in a way that was almost impossible at the time, certainly not as widespread as now.
Based upon what he said, feral children should have developed their own languages. They haven't. So languages are taught/learned. So even though the biological structure exists, they still must be learned. I have learned over time that Noam has a deep need to be contrarian on every fricking issue he discusses so that he can feel he is correct and smarter than everyone else.
Αυτό που ποτέ ο κύριος Τσιόμσκι δεν εξηγεί είναι την σχέση της πραγματικότητας με τη γλώσσα δηλαδή πώς αυτά που γράφουμε και λέμε σχετίζονται με όσα καταλαβαίνουμε.
..my thoughts, Intentions are biological and noticeable on a conscious and subconscious level. To speak to, you must first have the intent of communication. Language is a learned reinforcement a majority of the time. When someone is not saying what they mean, that's noticeable, not just in the language but the biological functions, energy, intention or what have you.
not true, you can be unconscious or not even thinking when you are speaking. The intention is just an illusion, produced as an afterthought after the response is already generated.
Most people can tell what a person is going to say before they say it through focusing attention. Intention is no illusion but the true manner of intended reaction, you can not hide energy easily buy you can disguise it with language. If everyone could read each other intentions language wouldn't be as useful as it is today. Verbal communication was probably developed and used as the last resort. Until we got smarter as a species and we were able to name more things and it became more useful and complicated.
"To speak to, you must first have the intent of communication. Language is a learned reinforcement most of the time." The statement seems to suggest that language is inseparable from communication. Although he doesn't talk about it in this interview, one of Chomsky's important assertions is, to the contrary, that the communicative properties of language are simply a bi-product. Language is first an internal system of thought.
